A widely traveled and wealthy artist known for his picturesque paintings, especially of Venice, Edward Darley Boit was born in Boston and died in Rome, Italy in 1915. (Some sources list 1916 as the death date). He studied at Harvard Law School and then studied art in Paris with Thomas Couture. He lived in Newport, Rhode Island from 1864 to 1871 and then went to Europe where he became an expatriate painter, living in France and Italy. However, he visited the United States nearly every year of his remaining life.

In Paris, he studied with Thomas Couture, and he exhibited at the Paris Salon in the 1870s and 1880s, and in 1914 at the Art Institute of Chicago. A close friend of John Singer Sargent, he and Sargent h...